#nele diel

[tabletopresources]

Underground environments by Nele Diel

Check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Baharna by Nele Diel

[siryl]

"Glowing Cavern" by Nele Diel.

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Sun Temple - Nele Diel

[geekynerfherder]

Showcasing art from some of my favourite artists, and those that have attracted my attention, in the field of visual arts, including vintage; pulp; pop culture; books and comics; concert posters; fantastical and imaginative realism; classical; contemporary; new contemporary; pop surrealism; conceptual and illustration.

The art of Nele Diel.

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Candle and Claw Cover Illustration - Nele-Diel

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[bravenred]

Walk the spiral into the underground histories where they maintain the speculations of every mage on record. Every experiment. Every theory. Every mistake.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure Arc: A Song on a Silent Night

Before we begin I’d like to get personal for a moment. About a year ago I decided I was going to step away from this blog as a daily format and only post when I was really inspired to. It was a drastic step, but one I had to make because I was so burnt out and so deep in seasonal depression that I was on the edge of having a breakdown. Ironically, it was this specific adventure arc that did it for me, as I felt pressured to make something for the holiday season but literally couldn't get words on the page. Taking a break turned out to be the best thing for me. This past year has been great and I’ve actually had enough energy to not only do the projects that are important to me, but to also improve my writing.   My partner and I have written a narrative podcast and we’re shopping it around to producers at the moment, I couldn’t be more excited. (BTW if you happen to be in the business, give me a shout) In many ways it’s very cathartic to come back and finish this adventure. I’d even say it was easy, since I didn’t have the pressure I self imposed because I thought I needed it to write. I just wanted to say: Take care of yourselves friends. Nurture yourself and good art will follow. I am so thankful to have you all as my audience and I hope you know that no matter how bleak the season gets it’s an absolute joy to write for you.

It’s the coldest night of the year, and despite all the lights on in town no one is home. They have been snatched from their beds and their hearthsides by a sinister song that carries on the wind and has spirited them off to another world. Our heroes must follow, and in order to get their friends and family back they must lay siege to the sorrowful heart of winter itself.

Find out what led to these events, and their outcome, below the cut.

Into:   Some weeks before the disappearances begin, the party are sent into the cold to check on a missing mail shipment, only to end up clashing against a group of hobgoblins intent on ruining the holiday season. From there, acts that might be construed as harmless planks escalate into outright malice as it becomes clear the hobs are disappearing townsfolk, working off some sort of list given to them by an unknown villain. 

Adventure Hooks:

If you’re running this adventure arc as part of a longer campaign, consider previewing the hob’s lair long before the villains every arrive, an old ruin where fey and witches are said to revel during the new moon. Having a low level party venture out to the ruins for a test of bravery only to return months later as veteran heroes will show them just how far they’ve grown.

From deadly pranks to highway robbery, each act of malicious mischief committed by the goblins is accompanied by a list of names and seemingly innocuous offenses, evidently ripped off a far larger list in possession of their leader. The party are likely to collect more than a few scraps of these over the course of their journeys, and will be surprised when they begin to form together, laying out a series of disappearances that stretches back some years. 

The goblins’ leader Klatterbell was having such a nice time in the mortal realm before the party got involved. As a hob-knight in service to an archfey of sorrow and frost, the material plane was practically a balmy vacation destination compared to his patron’s foreboding frozen realm. This led to Klatterbell slacking off on his task of collecting mortals and develop aspirations of becoming a sort of yuletide bandit lord.  Aspirations the party can’t help but thwart when they riad Klatterbell’s fortress and set the captives free.  The fight can end either two ways, either the party is defeated, captured, and banished through the portal to the frozen realm of the bleakfather,  or the party is victorious, and as his last act Klatterbell rips a horn from his belt and plays a haunting and mounrful note that will be picked up by the wind and transformed into a haunting tune. 

Returning home from defeating the goblins and rescuing the captives, the party find the town deserted, the strange music unleashed by Klatterbell’s horn echoing in the roar of an approaching winter storm. With their rescued townsfolk in toe, the party will begin to explore the eerily empty town, discovering that the inhabitants seemingly got up from what they were doing and walked into the cold, proceeding enmass to the edge of the settlement where the snow erases their footprints.   It’s at that point that the frost giants attack, walking out of the enroaching storm like it was a curtain between worlds. They’re here to mop up any townsfolk where were not swept up by the enchanting song and whisked away to the feywild, and maybe do some looting while they’re at it. 

Regardless of how it shakes out, the party will have to assail the realm of the Bleakfather, battling their way through a boreal wind that will seek to rip all warmth and joy from their bodies. The only way of getting through this storm is to think back on the moments of joy and light they’ve experienced through their adventures: the festivals, the little kindnesses, the gifts, the pranks, the games, the songs, their friends: These things will lend them strength when the cold and the dark creep in to swallow them… battling their way up the mountain, to rescue the townsfolk and perhaps defeat the archefey himself. 

Future Adventures: 

It wasn’t only the party’s neighbors that were taken captive by the bleakfather, scores of innocents from across the realms were taken by the frostgiants as thralls, all living out their indenture over the feywild’s timeless years. Hospitality will hold for the winter, but come spring the heroes will need to set off to find these people a place to live. 

With their slaves stolen and their fortress breached, the ice giants will scatter, some returning in months or years later at the head of raiding parties as they too seek a new home.  While some may be hesitant to give up their supremacy and seek to subdue the locals wherever they go, others may wish to live only in peace. 

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Arkham Horror Card Game - Iridescent Passage by Nele Diel

[dailycharacteroption]

Planar Tour Guide: Positive Energy Plane part 4

(art by Nele-Diel on DeviantArt)

Adventuring

While the Positive Energy Plane is  a place of life and new genesis, it is tied with it’s negative counterpart as one of the most hazardous planes to actually try and visit, and one could argue either one beats the other out based on whether you think the oppressive hunger of The Void beats out the deceptive assumptions made by those who assume Creation’s Forge is benign just because it is made of raw healing energies.

Beyond the plane shift spell, parties need to have planar adaptation in their arsenal to even dare go to this plane, limiting it to mid to high-level storylines, though there are ways to get around this, namely involving natural portals and those rare pockets of minor positive dominance, but given how rare and small they are, such adventures are likely very location-based and short-lived at best.

But of course, with the plane itself (as well as many of the locals) being so hostile, one has to ask… what would a party of adventurers want with plane?

As mentioned in previous entries, The Furnace’s inhospitable nature makes it the perfect place to store things that a group of heroes don’t want falling into the wrong hands. Evil artifacts, the soul cages and dread armor of liches and graveknights respectively that they can’t yet destroy (which has the added benefit of trapping such undead on a plane so inhospitable to them that their cell is likely the only place they can exist in, if that), monstrous or divine prisoners, and so on. If bargained with properly, the jyoti can be made to agree to be the wardens of such things, though it might be tricky to convince them to give it back if the party needs it for plot reasons if said wardens think they cannot be trusted with it.

Speaking of which, another related reason to venture to the plane might be to extract said artifacts or prisoners, either to use them for personal or plot-relevant reasons or gain information from them, and so on. Naturally, the jyoti wardens of such assets are inclined to politely deny direct requests AFTER they’ve put a spear in your throat, so when need is great, a heist or raid may be what is needed to get the goods out.

For all its straightforward role in the cosmos, the Positive Energy Plane is abound with mysteries of it’s own, ranging from the half-forgotten history of the conflict with it’s denizens and the gods and/or the sceanduinar of the Negative Energy Plane, answers to great mysteries of how the cosmos functions (like, if the plane is an infinite source of quintessence and positive energy, why does the Antipode river feeding it exist? And so on. Not to mention scholarly beings such as manasaputra and the turuls might have rare collections of knowledge which the party may need to unlock some great mystery in their own journey.

Despite it’s destructive potential, the Positive Energy Plane is still a place of healing, and the most potent necromantic curses or blights might find their cure in this place, making it worth the risk for the desperate.

The plane’s role in the birthing of new souls means it is at least partially culpable in the existence of not just every hero, but every villain that has ever lived. As such, a prophecy of a birth of such a legendary figure might spur some to try and witness that soul being created, and either enjoy the event or maybe try to stop a great evil from being ever conceived, (or preventing someone else from doing so) but such an act brings into question a lot about morality, predestination, and nature vs nurture. All of which can be awful or fascinating depending on how it is approached.

Of course, sometimes Creation’s Forge comes to you instead of the other way around. While the jyoti rarely leave the plane, they might if some event on another plane demands it. Meanwhile, both manasaputra and turul alike have a long history of guiding and manipulating mortals, all of which may draw the party to the plane once the truth is revealed.

That’s a decent spread of hooks and suggestions there, but that will do for today. Tomorrow, we’ll wrap things up for the week with the conclusion! Look forward to it!

[nomorerealitys-blog]

Forest Guardians by Nele-Diel

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Turncoat Chronicle is out today!

Turncoat Chronicle promotional art by Nele Diel. As the eldest child of the Usurper King, you were always meant to inherit your father’s stolen throne. When the lost heir of the dynasty he ended resurfaces, bent on revenge, you face a difficult choice. Your father’s enemies don’t have to be your own. Without allies, the Kidia heir has no hope of taking the throne back, but you could offer them…